With trial court approval of a settlement, the parties are close to reaching the end of the long and winding road of the Avery case. It’s about 20 years old and a fascinating case’ class claim approval occurred in 2016; see here. As explained by Law360 in a September 16, 2016 article, “the RICO plaintiffs allege that State Farm deliberately sought to “recruit, finance, direct and elect a candidate to the Illinois Supreme Court who, once elected, would vote to overturn the $1.05 billion judgment,” in a plan hatched in 2003. ….The plaintiffs claim State Farm, acting in conjunction with Murnane, Shephard and the Illinois Civil Justice League, tapped into a network of contributors to pour as much as $4 million into Karmeier’s campaign — a sum representing about 80 percent of the campaign’s contributions. The crux of the RICO allegations are two communications conducted through the U.S. Postal Service: written misrepresentations allegedly sent to the Illinois Supreme Court and to the plaintiffs’ counsel in 2005 and 2011 regarding the magnitude of the insurer’s financial support to Karmeier’s campaign.”
Approval of the settlement is described with some color commentary in a December 14, 2018 post at the Madison- St. Clair Record.